Sunday, July 5, 2015

Glory Hobble

It
was my moment. The phrase flashed on and off in my head like the
blue neon Pabst
in the window down at Morey's. A tombstone then floated into view
and there it was again, engraved beneath my name: "Hobbled to
glory."

Clearly
this was it. All my days' dreaming, scheming, writing,
blogging, pouting, propagating, proclaiming, pretending and any
other "p" you can imagine had come down to this one huge
life-defining Portentous Pretend. I was to limp with stunned,
growing horror, as I navigated through the swirling smoke and maze
of human corpses while the cameras rolled around me and probably
above me and, for all I knew, under me.

I
was an extra, or, as we're called nowadays, "background."
This insider's term I learned from my daughter, who'd landed a
background job for another remake of the old swashbuckling romance
To
Have and To Hold.
It was being filmed at various locations. Our set was within an hour's drive.

We'd
been rising at 3:30 a.m. over the past month to drive to the sets.
I'd drop her off at the "background tent," eat some
freshly fried eggs and corned beef hash, drink a freshly brewed cup
of coffee (the food on movie sets is bountiful, excellent and free)
and drive home to blog and nap before heading back to pick her up.
Thursday the casting director was shy several male "settlers."
He tapped me and another father/chauffeur to fill in.

At
$142 union scale per day and two terrific meals, surrounded all day
by pretty female settlers who depended on us rugged males to protect
them from the fierce indigenous warriors bent on annihilating every
last one of us, I hesitated for a New York second and enlisted.

The
day was long and very similar to an actual military encampment,
consisting largely of standing around awaiting orders and engaging
intermittently in furious moments of often arduous and dangerous
activity. For this the action included climbing a rickety ladder to
a rickety wooden shelf, firing a real flintlock blunderbuss over the
palisade, cutting my hand on one of the many sharp points at the top
as I swung a heavy rubber hatchet to beat back imaginary warriors
who attempted to scale the spikey wall and enter the fort, and,
after we'd satisfied the director's expectations, descending the
rickety ladder to solid ground. And maybe back up again if he
spotted some flaw while studying the rushes piped to screens in his
viewing tent.

When
the director shouted "wrap" at sundown I was as exhausted
and sore as if I'd been in a real battle.

My
performance was either so good or the set was still so shy they
invited me back.

Next
morning, after another heavenly breakfast of eggs, hash and coffee I
suited up and rode the van to the set. This time despite the
apparent shortage of background settlers they were also short of
rubber hatchets, forcing me to defend my women with a beech limb
club. I did so enthusiastically with a burgeoning feel of realism
and a steadily mounting awareness of various pains.

An
ankle, my lower back and the shoulder of the arm that had swung the
hatchet the day prior were most noticeably distressed.

It
was near the close of this day my moment of glory arrived. An
assistant director who was separated at birth from Kathy Bates (and,
for all I know might well be Kathy Bates) began plucking settlers
from the group of us who were standing around in the chilly wind as
one of the movie's final scenes was being prepared.

The
real Kathy Bates

"You're
dead," she'd say sweetly, tugging a poufy sleeve toward the
killing ground directly in front of the fort's front gate. The
settler would shuffle after her and, at her direction, lie down in a
crumpled heap among the other corpses already so dispatched. I kept
edging away from the selection site. She found me anyway.

"I
can't die," I said, peering into her sensitive brown eyes.
"My ankle hurts and if I lie down on that cold cold ground you
might need one of those camera cranes to get me back up."

Some
of what I just wrote is likely imaginary, but I believe "Kathy"
caught the drift of my concern at about the same time her eyes lit
up with a flash of innovation. "Come with me, anyway, dear. I
like your limp." I liked her then, too, a lot.

What
she had in mind was for me to limp slowly through the scattered
bodies, leaning on my club as if it were a crutch, which is
precisely how I was then using it. I was to pause at one of the
corpses along the way, stare at it a moment and shake my head sadly.
She shook her head to show me how. I shook mine the same way to show
her I understood.

"Perfect,
dearie," she said. "Only once, though. Don't do it more
than one time."

I
smiled intelligently, I think, and murmured sounds of enthusiastic
comprehension. Then I stood at the start of the mass of prostrate
Indians and settlers as Kathy and various other crew fiddled and
fussed, moving bodies this way and that, pulling one out and
bringing in a replacement. This process seemed interminable, as many
such scene preps did my two days on the set.

And
this is when my moment arrived. One of the corpses, at the very end
of the display, about thirty yards from where I stood, a female
figure I suddenly recognized was Sarah, my daughter.

You
can probably fill in the rest of this part yourself, but I'll
highlight the flashes: I hobble through the killing field as smoke
from machines and burning powder made from walnut shells turn the
field into a ghostly tableau of death, shake my head sadly at one of
the corpses, as directed, and then...and then when I reach my
daughter I do my Brando, defying Kathy's directions, and wobble to a
knee over my daughter, remove my wide-brimmed feathered hat, bow my
head and weep a just barely manly weep until the director's enormous
voice shouts CUT!!!
THAT'S A WRAP!!! to
be echoed by the shouted voices of his many underlings scattered
throughout the set.

They'd
have to leave it in, I knew. How could they not? Kathy would
forgive me. Maybe invite me to her trailer for a drink
afterward. I'd give her copies of my books. We'd...

"Take
a break, dears. Get some coffee," she shouted to me and
the corpses. I limped off to the coffee stand, still working the
scene over in my head, thinking maybe I could look up so that at
least one of the many cameras would catch me saying "Nooo!"
or something.

I
was hobbling back to the scene, sipping coffee, still working on
what I might blurt, knowing it had to be a real word so I'd move up
a notch from background to "speaking part" and be listed
in the credits. Thinking these kinds of craft thoughts. As I stepped
into the brightly lit killing area, Kathy approached from my left
and put a gentle hand on my shoulder.

"I'm
sorry, dearie. We're not doing the scene," she said. I don't
recall anything else she might have said, as these words had in fact
stunned me. My one flash that she'd said it merely to help me
achieve the method actor's realistic simulation of an emotion, in
this case being stunned, evaporated when she announced the same
dismissal to the corpses as they arrived with their coffee. Lights
were being extinguished. The scene was dead. The day was a wrap.

Back
at the background tent, they asked if I would be back for Saturday's
shoot. I would have loved to, but two things made me decline. I had
a book-signing scheduled and I knew my body would rebel were I to
ask it to climb one more rickety ladder or swing one more rubber
hatchet or wooden club or breathe one more lungful of ground walnut
shell smoke.

Sarah
and her brother went up, though, and their mother. I sold one book
at the Twice Told Tales signing, but I got to sit and breathe
untainted air. The only weapon I wielded was my pen. I walked
like Groucho each time I left my chair for one thing or another.
Still sore. Sad, too. I coulda been a...oh, I won't say it.

Jamestown
Massacre 1622

[Epilogue:
The filming described here was in 2012. It is now July 5, 2015, and To Have and To
Hold, starring Aiden Turner and Kelly Greyson, has yet to be
released. And that, as those who know love to say, is the film biz.]